Hi!

What exactly the "Tracer" captures, other than EQ curve ? because no, it didn't capture the saturation/harmonics of the units. The "Color" module reacts exactly the same on every other profile. The "Dynamic" feels that way too, but I haven't really fully tested it yet but for atleast 10 presets, it sounds the same. They advertised it as also capturing the compression transfer curve, assuming it will work together with the Dynamic module, it doesn't feel that way especially for certain type of compressor you know the sound of it. The harmonic generation of compression also the same, it's either the VCA or FET. Transfer curve on 10 presets I've tested are the same as well on the same settings and guess what they react/sound the same too (minus the EQ curve of course).

There's this profile from Castle Recording Studios that captures every single channel of their SSL 4000G+ console that only gives you something like this:


just that. 0 compression, 0 clipping, 0 anything else. well, some harmonics with the Color and Dynamic modules turn on, but both of the modules do the same thing, same settings on Color + Dynamics generates the same pattern of harmonics on 5 different presets from different pack with of course different consoles advertised. Lol. wtf

I mean as a sound-goodizer it actually does it's thing but all thanks to the built in modules in the plugin. The captures are actually just EQ curves (plus noise, lol) ? hmm. The compressor module is good for both VCA and FET mode, no complaint about that, but that's default on the plugin. The capture has close to zero influence on it. Turning off the dynamic module, no compression is happening at all on almost all presets.

The presets pack are acceptable since it was tuned by those people and justifiable for one to pay for it. The plugin though, just another glorified Toontrack EZMix with added famous people hardware chain EQ curve with professional looking GUI ? It's okay, some people might want/need that, I just don't understand the hype, saying shit like "this is the end of hardware chain" etc on a lot of demo videos on yt.

So, wtf is going on ? Strangely enough, it kinda sounds good, haha, like EZMix, I like EZMix too, some of the reverbs and imaging presets are awesome.

Hope someone with more passion can test the plugin and see what it is about. Others, what do you think about it ? Is this the end of hardware chain as we know it ? LOL

or those controversial PastToFutureReverbs IR packs of hardware and Adam studio monitor (lol) can give you better result ?

 

I was pretty stoked about this, hope it's not all hype and no substance.

 

if you are using the sister site version, make sure to test it on straight for an hour, I and another member found that it stopped working after 1 hour, timebomb. See if it happens to you as well.

 

PastToFuture is basically this but without noise , i opened some IR's at Plugin Doctor and the results are very next to this, changing from device to device. So it's interesting that you did this test. If this plugin is only those circuit curves, i'm better with evil and controversial PTF IR's because i can choose the harmonics and compression with the my favorite DSP plugins to add those. Sort of a building block style of building chains. And yes, i like those crazy eq curves from circuitry, in fact, after i descovered that i'm became pretty disapointed with devs that don't include those imperfections and crazy curves on their DSP. Maybe because of that some say plugins are flat and lifeless next to analog gear. And i also think noise is important for the analog emulation (PA and Fuse Audio are the winner at this) because hardware every device has a noise floor. And having the capacity of turning it on and off, adjusting the gain of the noise floor is a huge psychoacustical advance in analog modeling. Not like Waves that you have an annoying hiss playing at -40dbfs and don't even have a knob to adjust it.

ATM Proteus seems to be the most accurate one for capturing all the nuances of analogue. If controlhub are only IR curves, i will stick with the satanic and demented PTF IR's. If it adds something more, it will be a huge jump on analog modeling

 

some of the presets in ControlHUB have Waves plugins (also L2 Hardware) like Kramer Pie comp, Tape etc in the chain. It's common for most well known mixers to use Waves plugin because they already used to it and funny how people been running away from Waves plugins and buy this plugin only to endup with having Waves plugins at their face again.

 

The patented Grammy Winning Aliasing Tech is the pros choice, man

 

Don't forget the saturation-analog-mojo-harmonics
Actually, you can forget it -.`cause I'm pretty dfrunk right now. But!

 

UPDATE:

After doing some testing and doing my own tracer, figured few new things:

1) you can do your own Tracer profile, the file needed is included (click "locate" on Tracer page). You don't even need hardware chain, you can Trace your own plugins chain and create a profile.
2) apart from the hardware/plugin chain (or compressor) EQ curve, the Tracing process with also try to detect the Compression Transfer function and Saturation process that happen on the chain.
- the compression transfer will then be translated to the "Compressor" module with settings guessed from the tracing process.
- the saturation process predicted will be translated to the "Color" module with blending the "Tape" (3rd order heavy asymmetrical saturation) and "Tube" (2nd order heavy asymmetrical saturation) options on the module.
3) All those settings 3 modules will then become your starting point to further (manually) tweak them to match your chain sound characteristic accurately if you wish.
4) By today's standard of profiling technology, I think the EQ curve captured is pretty accurate 80% atleast, I tried to trace Pro-Q3 and it still didn't null. lol
5) Compression is only 30-40% accurate with everything exaggerated and sounds like a setting on Waves CLA-76
6) Saturation capture is just there for the meme and will continue being one atleast for few years to come.

It gave me that similar smile I had everytime I saw a Metalhead doing their "clean tone" on a Fender amp and manage to make it sounds like a solid state amp covered with a blanket, effortlessly. If that makes any sense.

 

Last edited: Sep 15, 2023

I'm probably going to try it later in the week... I'm still putting a whole new daw together

 

Never used this plugin, but on your graph, it looks like the type of comb filtering that can happen when some analog components used in parallel are not properly aligned in time. I remember seeing this type of behavior in an old Pultec, so maybe the console they captured was faulty.

Reading through the marketing of this plugin, it looks like the type of technology (dynamic IRs) used by Kemper, Acustica and others. It's good for EQs and distortion, but it simply doesn't work for compression. You must use another type of techology, that is way less predictable. Basically, there is a compressor inside the plugin with lots of settings, and the capture process tries to adjust every setting to best match the compressor that is being captured. It's very hard to do it right, so if you wondered why compressors from Acustica sucked for so many years, it's because of that. You can learn more about dynamic IRs here.

Plugins based on component-level circuit simulation are way superior for compression, so it's perfectly normal if the compressors they captured are dogsh*t and that the harmonic generation is the same

 

Don't know if it's the same, but i've seen this happen a lot with (mostly old) Acustica audio stuff and the closest thing i found to an explaination comes from Cupwise FX (a third party developer for Nebula:

Spoiler

 

I think the text in the image you linked is a more probable explanation than mine to what's happening in OP's graph. They just didn't captured long enough IRs lmao.

 

Last edited: Sep 11, 2023

In all honesty, nowadays it's the only channel strip I use. I don't care about plugin forensics, null tests, or graphical analysis. It sounds great and it has a workflow that works for me. It's one of the best investments for my studio.

 

After this thread i was testing other things that i have like Acustica Audio, PTF and the old legendary Q-CLONE from Waves. My audio engeneering teacher have some Massive Passive captures for Q-Clone and gave it to the students a long time ago, but never paid much attention at that point (2 years ago). But now i was analyzing some of the captures and they are pretty similar between each other, and similar with AA, PTF and ControlHub, in the sense of all of them have those crazy bumps, bandwith and frequency response.

Transformer response on Q-Clone:






API 512 pre


Q-Clone Studer tape


PastToFuture AMPEX 1200


PTF API Console:



I can't post more, because of the forum limitations regarding images. But also have some AA screen pics that prove that they have the same behaviour as the Devs mentioned before (especially Nebula that's 'dynamic convolution' as the Italian says and shown by
@mk_96 )



I don't think it's faulty. Blaming this as misbehavior is like telling that the noise floor of some gear is a misbehavior. I also have some flat SSL presets for Q-Clone and they are pretty flat on the curves, although it stills looks something like the image that @Stevie Dude posted. Emulating those curves or not is a choice, like emulating the noise. But again, AA have a lot of praisers because they do capture this. So really don't think it's misbehaviour. I think it's way more snake oilish selling a SONTEC 432 emulation that distorts strange (people think harmonics = analog) and don't have the fairy dust dithering noise floor that the HW device is loved for, like Metric Halo did with that plugin.

I'm realizing that people get scared of those things: when Plugin Doctor didn't existed, people didn't even think about this, even though they were working on those crazy bands and curves on their analog devices. Now that we can see with our eyes whats happening behind the scenes, this is bringing fear and the feeling of "let me just do my mix with pro-q and saturn and don't worry a sh*t about that". Not wrong, if you're producer and mixer. You're not skipping anything for not working on that crazy analog curves. But very wrong if you're a dev that claims you're making a 1:1 analog emulation plugin and just put two lines of harmonics and cramps at nyquist

 

That's a very unhealthy relationship with your gear. You should mix with your eyes like the real men.

 

The EQ section will not work as the modelled Eq. Same with the colour and the compressor. Pick a preset and turn of eqs, colour and compressor. There is a sound there. The sound of the profile. If you don't like you can tweak it with the existed processors of eq, colour and compressor. They are not part of the profiled chain and they work as standard eqs, saturators and compressors.

 

I see more and more ppl using "audio analysis" tools ... but they don't know how to use them.
And i see ppl like PastToFuture making linear IRs from non linear hardware too ... like IRs tape

So basically, i just trust myself now

Because this sh*t is becoming ridiculous

 

IR's...

It all started with reverb's. Then it went downhill from there. The thinking now being that EVERY thing is IR'able. It isn't. But most certainly there are those that strongly disagree. To those I say the same thing that I say to the ones that think EVERY thing can be sampled. You can carry out your "process" for capturing IR or samples but you only get a pale imitation (in some cases not even that) of whatever the particular subject might be.

At the end of the day it all comes down to what your ears tell you. If they are telling you that something ain't right (to which there are many so called "products" out there that evoke that kind of response) then it ain't right, accept it and move on.

 

That's why i continue to use Nebula (only on master bus).
Even if some random ppl with analysis tool and no ears pretend it does nothing else than EQ curve (lol ... what a joke ...).

 

Funny times

I mix many gigs on the OmniChannel period nothing else except some verbs and delays but all in the omni fuck yeah